Fallout meets Diablo and has a post-apocalyptic holiday in Sweden. But can this tongue-in-cheek action role-player match up to genre master Diablo III?

Krater (PC) – almost diabolical

The Diablo clone might be one of the few genres named after a single game but that doesn’t imply the original is an easy thing to copy. As the recent Diablo III proves the apparently simply concept and mechanics float above an insanely complex sea of checks and balances. But these deceptively deep waters are not ones that Krater has been able to navigate in any safety.Although comparisons with Diablo are obvious and necessary, in terms of setting Krater favours the pre-Bethesda Fallout titles for inspiration. There’s a similar line in black humour and the situation for the survivors of World War III is equally bleak, with most people having taken to living in a giant impact crater (or krater as the Swedish spelling would have it – both the game and developer Fatshark are based in Sweden).The upside of Armageddon is that suddenly there’s an awful lot of free stuff to claim as your own and not only does the gameplay revolve around scavenging for loot, but so too does the plot. There are three main factions in the game, all fighting over who gets to explore the depths of the crater. Unlike Diablo you don’t play as just one character, but rather a team of three. But once any of them die they’re dead for good (unless you play on Casual) – so there tends to be a pretty quick turnover of staff.There are four character classes, each with a unique range of weapons and special abilities. The club-wielding Bruisers are the tanks of the game, Medikus are the healers, Regulators are the ranged fighters, and Slayers are the fast-but-weak athletes. Each can be customised with implants and power-ups but beyond that the skill trees are extremely withered-looking and there’s nowhere near the flexibility of other similar games. Or indeed even most shooters nowadays.The frequency with which you recruit new players is such that it becomes painfully obvious that they’re not really characters at all, just clones of the four main archetypes with only tiny differences in stats and implants. Making things even worse is that there’s an artificial level cap that is occasionally raised at certain points in the game. But when that happens you’re forced to recruit new characters to take advantage of it.This not only removes any last chance that you might become attached to any of your team, but it also means you have to go back to less dangerous areas of the game and laboriously level-grind your new team into a useful fighting force.There’s an equal lack of variety in enemies as there is player characters; and although the fact that most missions are just bland fetch quests hardly stands as a unique complaint in the genre it just adds to the feeling that you’ve seen everything Krater has to offer in the first 30 minutes. Even the crafting system works against the game, as it essentially devalues any loot you might find from defeated enemies.Diablo and its clones are often criticised for the repetitiveness of their combat, but although it’s true that all you’re doing is pointing and clicking the range of weapons and abilities you have at your disposal in Diablo III is truly vast. In Krater though it’s tiny and it’s almost impossible to remain interested given the lack of tactical depth this ensures.Considering the number of peculiar design decisions and seemingly obvious mistakes we initially took Swedish developer Fatshark to be a brand new studio. But they’ve worked on cowboy shooter Lead And Gold and Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 before, and while far from perfect at least they understood their respective genres better than this.Some of Krater’s issues may be fixed as time goes on, and although its retail release is this week it was initially released on Steam a month or so ago. In that time Fatshark have seemed fairly hands-on and there’s already a promise of a patch to add co-op play in the near future. But that’s not really going to do anything about the game’s more deep-rooted problems.Despite an obvious surplus of effort and ambition Krater just doesn’t work as intended. The graphics aren’t bad and the game has a good sense of humour about itself, but then it needs to considering all its many problems.In Short:A Diablo clone set in a Fallout style world sounds like a great idea, but the changes this makes to Blizzard’s formula are genuinely apocalyptical.Pros:There aren’t too many games set in a mutant-infested Sweden, and Krater gets some good mileage out of the setting in both visuals and humour.Cons:The combat is basic as it is, but the lack of meaningful character customisation – and the need to constantly level grind new teams – is painfully tiresome.Score:2/10Formats: PCPrice: £19.99Publisher: Lace Mamba GlobalDeveloper: Fatshark Release Date: 17th August 2012Age Rating: 16Video:Check out the Krater trailer